Then he proceeded to make matters worse. Wolfowitz, a former deputy defence secretary, ruffled feathers by relying on a tight band of Republican loyalists and adopting a management style that many career staffers complained was more appropriate to a corporate chieftain than a fighter in the global war on poverty.

The ill-will meant that Wolfowitz had few defenders to summon when a conflict-ofinterest flap erupted over his role in obtaining a large salary increase for his companion and fellow bank official, Shaha Riza.

"It was an opportunity for the knives to come out, " said Dane Rowlands, an economist at Carleton University, Ottawa. "He could have gotten away with it if he were a different person, and if there hadn't already been bad blood."

Bitterness over the Wolfowitz affair may harm the bank's ability to raise billions for new projects while undermining a US-led drive to fight corruption, some development experts say.

"It makes it harder for the bank to lead the crusade against corruption and it may also undermine the institution's financial power, '' said Bea Edwards, a director at the Government Accountability Project, a Washingtonbased whistleblower organisation.

Wolfowitz's efforts to defend himself also rubbed officials the wrong way. When the board inquiry began in early April, he apologised and placed his fate in the hands of directors.

After hiring Robert Bennett as his lawyer, he became more defiant, insisting the ethics charges against him were "bogus" and refusing to resign unless they were dropped.

"Wolfowitz is not merely a victim of his political past, " said Colin Bradford, a former World Bank official and currently a fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based policy research organisation. "He kept racking up the strikes, going far beyond the traditional three."

The model bank officials hoped Wolfowitz would emulate was that of Robert McNamara, whose involvement in the Vietnam war as US defence secretary also stirred passions when he was appointed head of the institution in 1968.

McNamara managed to shed his image as a superhawk, concluding a 13-year stint at the bank in 1981 after launching a broad assault against Third World poverty.

Wolfowitz enjoyed a brief honeymoon. Some officials who had been worried by his ideology were encouraged by his focus on the problems of Africa. That won him some support in the region, though Europeans remained hostile.

"I feel sorry for what has happened to Mr Wolfowitz, " said Denise Sinankwa, Burundi's finance minister. "If it was up to us he would keep his job."

His reliance on a coterie of Republican aides with no experience in development and an open distrust of the bank's bureaucracy especially riled veteran staffers. "His aides never fitted easily into the bank and cost him a lot of goodwill, " said Manish Bapna, executive director of the Bank Information Center, a Washington-based think-tank.

Among the aides who wielded wide influence under Wolfowitz were Robin Cleveland, a former White House budget officer who helped secure funding for the war in Iraq, and Kevin Kellems, a former spokesman for US Vice President Dick Cheney.

Kellems quit as Wolfowitz's communications director earlier this month as pressure mounted on his boss.

Within 18 months of Wolfowitz's appointment, half of the bank's 29 highest-level executives had departed.

Among them was Christiaan Poortman, vice president for the Middle East and a 30-year World Bank veteran. Poortman left in September 2006 after resisting pressure to speed up lending and staff deployments for Iraq.

Bank executive directors also objected to the aggressiveness of Wolfowitz's anticorruption crusade, which was a hallmark of his presidency.

"He sent a signal that the board was not worth listening to, " said Dennis De Tray, a former World Bank director and a vice president at the Center for Global Development, a Washington-based policy organization.

"Many also saw a contradiction between his efforts to push loans into Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, countries known for their high levels of corruption, and his assertion that we should not be lending when the money might be misused, " said De Tray.

Defenders of Wolfowitz argued that his troubles stemmed from a desire to shake up the institution and attack corruption in developing countries.

"Bank bureaucrats and European governments did not want him to rock the boat by insisting on a tougher line on corruption, " said Alan Meltzer, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. "They just wanted to go on shoveling the money out of the door."